The legal fight over efforts to unionize Minnesota child care providers will continue despite a federal judge’s refusal to halt a current organizing drive.

Providers on both sides of the issue say they will continue working outside the courtroom to persuade peers that unions either are or are not compatible with child care.

“The thing we’ve been doing all along is educate, educate, educate, educate,” said Becky Swanson, 54, of Lakeville, who opposes the unionization effort. “We’re networking out to everybody.”

“I’ve spent about every spare penny I can having people help me out — so that the kids are well taken care of — so that I can make a phone call or send an email,” said Lisa Thompson, 46, of St. Paul, who supports the union drive.

In May, Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law a bill that grants child care providers the chance at creating a union that could negotiate contract terms with the state of Minnesota. The state offers payment to many providers through a subsidy program that allows lower-income families to access day care services.

The law promptly drew two legal challenges.

One lawsuit argued that the statute forces people to associate and speak together, a violation of the First Amendment. A second argued the law is pre-empted by a federal statute that should govern such issues.

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis dismissed both suits, saying the legal actions were premature because the unions aren’t yet functioning and might not even come into being.

The second lawsuit, which was brought by Swanson and 10 others, also argued the statute wrongly excludes from a union vote those child care providers who don’t receive state subsidies. Davis rejected that argument.

“By definition, one group receives the subsidies and is directly affected by them, and the other group does not receive the subsidies and is not directly affected by them,” the judge wrote in an order dismissing the case.

Union supporters cheered the decision, but Monday, they said they expected the legal challenges to continue.

“We expect that there will be more lawsuits,” said Jennifer Munt, a spokeswoman for AFSCME, the union that’s trying to organize child care providers. “But we forge ahead.”

Bill Messenger, an attorney for plaintiffs raising First Amendment objections to the state statute, pledged further court action.

“The legal fight will continue,” Messenger wrote in an email. “The district court only held that the legal challenge was premature because home child care providers might not be unionized, and did not reach the issue of whether it is constitutional to collectivize them for this reason.”

Douglas Seaton, the attorney for Swanson and the 10 other plaintiffs, said they are considering their options.

“We now have to decide whether to bring an appeal directly from his decision, or whether to wait … to see if we can meet the standard the judge set for ripeness,” Seaton said.

The push in the Legislature to allow child care providers to form a union sparked intense debate between the Democratic-Farmer-Labor majority and Republicans in the House and Senate.

The law lets two groups of workers — child care providers who receive state subsidies and certain personal care attendants — have the chance at voting on whether to form a union.

It gives unions until 2017 to conduct an election, said Munt of AFSCME. Before any such vote can occur, the union must collect 500 cards from child care providers who say they want the union, Munt said. Then, the union must demonstrate that it has support from at least 30 percent of child care workers eligible to vote.

The first day the union could file the 500 cards was July 1, but AFSCME has not yet done so, Munt said. Under the law, Aug. 1 is the first day the union could submit documentation showing 30 percent support.

Munt would not speculate on a likely timeline for those next steps.

“We have been visiting with 12,700 child care providers all across the state,” she said. “We’ll file for a union election once we know that we can win.”

In November 2011, Dayton issued an executive order calling for a union election for child care providers, but a group of them sued in opposition. In April 2012, Ramsey County District Judge Dale Lindman blocked the union vote, ruling that Dayton had exceeded his authority, saying no employer-employee relationship exists between child care providers and the state, and noting the issue should be dealt with by the Legislature.

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